Kanpai

O-hisashiburi!

Since the last time I penned this here column -- back in the good old days of 2006, an altogether more innocent period in modern history -- a few things have happened. Sony launched the PS3 here in Japan but no-one seemed to care that much. Nintendo released its Wii and the whole world (not just the whole gaming world, but everyone) went utterly bonkers for it.

Other important things also hit: Chelsea didn't win the Premier League (ha!) and Bjork released her first mediocre record (oh); the DS became embedded in modern Japanese culture (ooh) and... my wife is about to deliver our first child (yes!). If I can, I'm going to tie those last two events together in this comeback column. Just you see.

We've been visiting a maternity hospital in the middle of Kyoto every week for the past couple of months as, in needless game industry terminology, our son is "set for release" in the middle of August (sorry, "Q2 2007"). We've been fortunate enough to find a great hospital, but unfortunately every pregnant woman in Japan seems to have found it as well. As a result, even if we make an appointment for 2 p.m. there's usually no way we can be seen until 3 p.m. or later, because we're in a very long queue.

Happily, though, thanks to Nintendo, we have a miracle machine that can make an hour feel like ten minutes. It's called the DS.

In a waiting room full of 25 pregnant women, we always see at least five or six other patients using DS Lites to speed up the passage of time. Until about a month ago, from the way they were holding their Lites in book mode and from sending the missus on "go on, just glance over her shoulder" reconnaissance missions, most of the mothers-to-be were -- as you'd expect -- training either their brains or their eyes (Mejikara Training, which tests your powers of observation, has been a significant hit here in recent months).

Then, towards the end of June, Nintendo released Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and the climate changed. The following week, besides my wife (who began playing Phantom Hourglass obsessively as soon as she saw its "really pretty graphics" and has taken the game along on every hospital trip since, although she's close to completing it now) there were seven DS Lite users in attendance, and we soon realized -- partly assisted by overheard snippets of conversations between the mothers-to-be and fathers-to-be -- that all of them were playing through Link's latest adventure.